16 Ways Syndetics Unbound Wows Library Patrons

Syndetics Unbound aims to boost the value of your library catalog by making patrons happier and increasing circulation

By combining ProQuest’s Syndetics Plus with LibraryThing’s LibraryThing for Libraries and Book Display Widgets, Syndetics Unbound serves as a powerful, dynamic new tool featuring 16 enrichments to help patrons get the most out of your library’s catalog or discovery layer. These include professional and user-generated content, information about the item being viewed, and jumping-off points to explore similar items.

It’s simple

Syndetics Unbound is a complete and unified solution, not a menu of options spread across one or even multiple vendors.

It starts with a simple design, which looks good and is ready to go right out of the box.

The installation requirements for Syndetics Unbound are minimal. If you already have Syndetics Plus or LibraryThing for Libraries, you’re all set. If you’ve never been a customer, you only need to add a line of HTML to your OPAC, and to upload your holdings.

Although it’s simple, we didn’t neglect options. Libraries can rearrange elements, or drop them entirely. We expect libraries will pick and choose, and evaluate elements according to patron needs, or feedback from our detailed usage stats. Libraries can also tweak the look and feel with custom CSS stylesheets.

And simplicity is affordable. To curate a not-quite-equivalent bundle from ProQuest’s and LibraryThing’s separate offerings would cost far more.

16 comprehensive enrichments to wow your patrons:

- Premium Cover Service Syndetics offers the most comprehensive cover database in existence for libraries—over 25 million full-color cover images for books, video, and music with thousands of new covers added every week.

For Syndetics Unbound, we added boilerplate covers for items that don’t have a cover, which include the title, author, and media type.

- Summaries We curate more than 18 million essential summaries and annotations, so patrons know what the book’s about.

- About the Author This section includes the author biography and a small shelf of other items by the author. It also features a small author photo—a first in the catalog, although familiar elsewhere on the web.

- Look Inside This includes three previous Syndetics enrichments (first chapters or excerpts, table of contents and large-size covers) newly presented as a “peek inside the book” feature.

- Series Showcases a book’s series, including reading order. If the library is missing part of the series, those covers are shown but grayed out.

- You May Also Like Provides sharp, on-the-spot readers’ advisory in your catalog, with the option to connect with a larger world of suggestions, drawn from LibraryThing members and big-data algorithms. In this and other enrichments, Syndetics Unbound only recommends items that your library owns.

The Syndetics Unbound recommendations cover far more of your collection than any similar service. For example, statistics from the Hartford Public Library show this feature on 88% of items viewed.

- Professional Reviews More than 5.4 million reviews from Library Journal, School Library Journal, New York Times, The Guardian, The Horn Book, BookList, BookSeller + Publisher Magazine, Choice, Publisher’s Weekly, and Kirkus. A la carte review sources include Voice of Youth Advocates: VOYA, Doody’s Medical Reviews and Quill and Quire.

- Reader Reviews More than 1.5 million vetted, reader reviews from LibraryThing members. It also allows patrons and librarians to add their own ratings and reviews, right in your catalog, and then showcase them on a library’s home page and social media.

- Also Available As Helps patrons find other available formats and versions of a title in your collection, including paper, audio, ebook, and translations.

- Tags Explore your collection with a classification system built on over 130 million user-added tag, from "steampunk" to "cozy mysteries" and beyond." Tag approval and authority control ensure only high-quality tags make it through, and a new exploration interface allows patrons to explore how tags intersect, to find holdings you can't find in other ways.

- Book Profile A newly dynamic version of what Bowker has done for years—analyzing thousands of new works of fiction, short-story collections, biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs annually. Now every term is clickable, and patrons can search and browse over one million profiles.

- Reading Level Explore other books in the same age and grade range. Reading Level also includes Metametrics Lexile® Framework for Reading. Click the “more” button to get a new, super-powered reading-level explorer.

- Awards Highlights the awards a title has won, and helps patrons find highly-awarded books in your collection. Includes biggies like the National Book Award and the Booker Prize, but also smaller awards like the Bram Stoker Award and Oklahoma’s Sequoyah Book Award.

- Browse Shelf Connect patrons with the context and serendipity of browsing a physical shelf, using your call numbers. Includes a mini shelf-browser that sits on your detail pages, and a full-screen version, launched from the detail page.

- Video and Music Add summaries and other information for more than four million video and music titles including annotations, performers, track listings, release dates, genres, keywords, and themes.

- Video Games Provides game descriptions, ESRB ratings, star ratings, system requirements, and even screenshots.

- Book Display Widgets Virtual book displays that go on your library’s homepage, blog, LibGuides, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or even in email newsletters. Display Widgets can be filled with preset content, such as popular titles, new titles, DVDs, journals, series, awards, tags, and more. Or you point them at a web page, RSS feed, or list of ISBNs, UPCs, or ISSNs. If your data is dynamic, the widget updates automatically.

Check out some Book Display Widget examples.

Find out more

Here are some sample links of Syndetics Unbound at Hartford Public Library in Hartford, CT: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, Faithful Place by Tana French.

Webinars We hold webinars every Tuesday. Sign up for a live webinar where we’ll walk you through the different elements of our service and answer questions. Learn more.

Syndetics Unbound boosts the value of your library catalog by making patrons happier and increasing circulation

By combining ProQuest’s Syndetics Plus with LibraryThing’s LibraryThing for Libraries and Book Display Widgets, Syndetics Unbound serves as a powerful, dynamic new tool featuring 16 enrichments to help patrons get the most out of your library’s catalog or discovery layer. These include professional and user-generated content, information about the item being viewed, and jumping-off points to explore similar items.

It’s simple

Syndetics Unbound is a complete and unified solution, not a menu of options spread across one or even multiple vendors.

It starts with a simple design, which looks good and is ready to go right out of the box.

The installation requirements for Syndetics Unbound are minimal. If you already have Syndetics Plus or LibraryThing for Libraries, you’re all set. If you’ve never been a customer, you only need to add a line of HTML to your OPAC, and to upload your holdings.

Although it’s simple, we didn’t neglect options. Libraries can rearrange elements, or drop them entirely. We expect libraries will pick and choose, and evaluate elements according to patron needs, or feedback from our detailed usage stats. Libraries can also tweak the look and feel with custom CSS stylesheets.

Simplicity is affordable. To curate a not-quite-equivalent bundle from ProQuest’s and LibraryThing’s separate offerings would cost far more.

16 comprehensive enrichments to wow your patrons:

- Premium Cover Service Syndetics offers the most comprehensive cover database in existence for libraries—over 25 million full-color cover images for books, video, and music with thousands of new covers added every week.

For Syndetics Unbound, we added boilerplate covers for items that don’t have a cover, which include the title, author, and media type.

- Summaries We curate more than 18 million essential summaries and annotations, so patrons know what the book’s about.

- About the Author This section includes the author biography and a small shelf of other items by the author. It also features a small author photo—a first in the catalog, although familiar elsewhere on the web.

- Look Inside This includes three previous Syndetics enrichments (first chapters or excerpts, table of contents and large-size covers) newly presented as a “peek inside the book” feature.

- Series Showcases a book’s series, including reading order. If the library is missing part of the series, those covers are shown, but grayed out.

- You May Also Like Provides sharp, on-the-spot readers’ advisory in your catalog, with the option to connect with a larger world of suggestions, drawn from LibraryThing members and big-data algorithms. In this and other enrichments, Syndetics Unbound only recommends items that your library owns.

The Syndetics Unbound recommendations cover far more of your collection than any similar service. For example, statistics from the Hartford Public Library show this feature on 88% of items viewed.

- Professional Reviews More than 5.4 million reviews from Library Journal, School Library Journal, New York Times, The Guardian, The Horn Book, BookList, BookSeller + Publisher Magazine, Choice, Publisher’s Weekly, and Kirkus. A la carte review sources include Voice of Youth Advocates: VOYA, Doody’s Medical Reviews and Quill and Quire.

- Reader Reviews More than 1.5 million vetted, reader reviews from LibraryThing members. It also allows patrons and librarians to add their own ratings and reviews, right in your catalog, and then showcase them on a library’s home page and social media.

- Also Available As Helps patrons find other available formats and versions of a title in your collection, including paper, audio, ebook, and translations.

- Tags Explore your collection with a classification system built on over 130 million user-added tags, from "steampunk" to "cozy mysteries" and beyond. Tag approval and authority control ensure only high-quality tags make it through, and a new exploration interface allows patrons to explore how tags intersect, to discover holdings you can't find in other ways.

- Book Profile A newly dynamic version of what Bowker has done for years—analyzing thousands of new works of fiction, short-story collections, biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs annually. Now every term is clickable, and patrons can search and browse over one million profiles.

- Reading Level Explore other books in the same age and grade range. Reading Level also includes Metametrics Lexile® Framework for Reading. Click the “more” button to get a new, super-powered reading-level explorer.

- Awards Highlights the awards a title has won, and helps patrons find highly-awarded books in your collection. Includes biggies like the National Book Award and the Booker Prize, but also smaller awards like the Bram Stoker Award and Oklahoma’s Sequoyah Book Award.

- Browse Shelf Connect patrons with the context and serendipity of browsing a physical shelf, using your call numbers. Includes a mini shelf-browser that sits on your detail pages, and a full-screen version, launched from the detail page.

- Video and Music Add summaries and other information for more than four million video and music titles including annotations, performers, track listings, release dates, genres, keywords, and themes.

- Video Games Provides game descriptions, ESRB ratings, star ratings, system requirements, and even screenshots.

- Book Display Widgets Virtual book displays that go on your library’s homepage, blog, LibGuides, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or even in email newsletters. Display Widgets can be filled with preset content, such as popular titles, new titles, DVDs, journals, series, awards, tags, and more. Or you point them at a web page, RSS feed, or list of ISBNs, UPCs, or ISSNs. If your data is dynamic, the widget updates automatically.